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An interview with Catharine Clark-Sayles

Catharine Clark-Sayles is a geriatrician practicing north of San Francisco. She traveled across the United States extensively with a military family while she was young, then became an Army doctor. When she turned forty she discovered that she had missed her twenties the first time around and reconnected with poetry to find them.

https://clarksayles.com/

Jim: Who first inspired you to write poetry?

Catharine:
When I was a child my grandfather, a Newspaper editor, sent me a book of Robert Frost poetry, You Come Too. I wrote on and off through childhood then stopped for years. The local weatherman was leading a three-day mini cruise to Ensenada and giving lectures on the weather. He asked us to write a poem and it reminded me of the pleasure.

Jim: You have written three books of poetry. The third book is due out soon. Please tell us about your newest work, Brats.

Catharine:
My dad was career military–started as a private in the Army Air Corps and retired with two stars from the Air Force Space Command. I was a military brat: a label of pride. It was not always the easiest way to grow up. These are poems from that experience. They are mostly narrative. Since I was an Army doctor, my first night on call felt like a new kid started over at a new base so there is a poem from that as well as a couple from my medical world.

Jim:
When I think of your poetry, William Carlos Williams enters my mind. He was also a medical doctor that took the time to write and publish his poetry. What value does the act of being a poet bring to your life?

Catharine:
Dr. Williams provided a model of a doctor having a full practice, writing poems and writing about the lives of his patients. For me, poetry has given me better listening and a better ability to explain. I joke that I am fluent in metaphor. I can wait better for the story of an illness to develop. No matter the identified set of symptoms, there is often a secret worry about what they mean that needs to be addressed to help heal.

Jim: What is the best way for a poet to gain a larger reading audience for their work?

Catharine:
I am not as good at this as I should be but I think you start locally, connect with your community, support other writers and send out good work regularly. Connect with a writing group through a class or a writers conference, go to open mic, send out work frequently and show up for other poets. Buy poetry books and give them as gifts. Let friends know you are interested in reading your work.

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An interview with Rachel Brune

Rachel Brune served five years as a combat journalist, including two tours in Iraq, and a brief stint as a columnist for her hometown newspaper. After her second tour, she attended graduate school at the University at Albany in NY, where she earned her MA in Political Communication, and her commission as a second lieutenant in the military police corps. She returned to the Army Reserve in November 2014.

http://infamous-scribbler.com/blog/about-contact-info/

My interview with Rachel Brune:

Jim: Who is your favorite living author?

Rachel:

Well, that’s a tricky question, because I’m friends with and/or follow a lot of my favorite authors on Facebook and social media… but lately I’ve been really enjoying re-reading Michael Connelly, who writes some of the best detective fiction out there, as well as getting into Brian McClellan’s fantasy novels.

Jim: You have written many books. I’ve read two of them, and reviewed one. What is the best book that you have written, and why?

Rachel:

I think that my best book is always the one I’m writing next. I’m always trying to improve every time I sit down to write, so that is the goal, at least. That said, I think the piece of writing that I look back most fondly on is a short story I wrote, a steampunk horror piece called “THE TERRIBLE, VAST PYRE OF CHIEF MACHINIST KIRLISOVEYITCH” that appeared in the October 2012 issue of Dark Moon Digest.

Jim: Where do your most creative ideas spring from?

Rachel:

Most of the time, different kernels of ideas are coming together and interacting with each other without me realizing it, until something clicks and I’ll have to grab a pen and paper, or my phone, and write it down. I have a lot of disparate hobbies and experiences, and while it sometimes means that it looks like I’m all over the place, it also means that I have a hard time stopping the flow of ideas long enough to actually write down and work with one until it becomes a book.

Jim: When did you decide to become a writer?

Rachel:

It’s only in the past few years that I consciously decided that I was going to pursue this as a career. Prior to that, writing was something that I did in addition to whatever career I was pursuing. But I’ve been writing since I started a newspaper for my neighborhood block when I was in the third or fourth grade.

Jim: Why is it hard for the independent nonfiction writer to earn a living?

Rachel:

That’s a good question. I don’t know if it’s really my area of expertise, but I would say that the current publishing success model relies on publishing often, publishing niche, and building as much of an author platform as possible.

Nonfiction authors, on the other hand, typically spend more time on their work, and the audience tends to be somewhat smaller for their finished projects. There are always a million factors that affect an author’s fiscal health, but those are the ones I could see of particular relevance to nonfiction writers.

Jim: How does a novelist gain a wider reading audience?

Rachel:

Write well enough and often enough that people will give your book a chance, and then come back and give the next book a chance. Sounds super easy, right? Also, learn marketing and social media strategy, as well as enough graphic design to hire a good cover designer. Finally, have some capital to finance your career, because even if you’re with a publishing house, you’re going to have to do some marketing yourself. And finally, when you are discouraged and contemplating quitting — don’t. Just keep going and putting words on paper and putting yourself out there and learning all you can about how to do those things effectively.